Western Digital Velociraptor 300GB SATA HD

Although hard drives don't typically draw huge amounts of power, we still wanted to see how the Velociraptor compared to its peets in terms of power consumption. Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we monitored how much power our test system was consuming using a power meter. Our goal was to give you all an idea as to how much power each configuration used while idling and under load. Please keep in mind that we were testing total system power consumption at the outlet here, not just the power being drawn by the drives alone.

Power Consumption As Reported by Seasonic Power Angel

Somewhat surprisingly, despite offering the best overall performance, the WD Velociraptor also consumes the least amount of power.  The deltas are quite small amongst the three newest drives (the Velociraptor, Caviar SE16 WD64000AAKS, and RE WD1000FYPS), with only a single watt or two separating the drives, but the Velociraptor was lowest nonetheless.